Review
Genre and Mood
Portugal. The Man made Feel It Still as a quick, swinging slice of funk-pop; in Feel It Still - Coldabank Remix, Coldabank turns it towards the dance floor. The remix sits between dance and indie pop: the band’s vocal and hook stay, while the track is stretched for a club. The mood stays upbeat, groovy and playful, with an extra minute and a half to spend.
Song Summary
The original song is built on a borrowed melody, the Marvelettes’ 1961 Motown hit Please Mr. Postman, and a bassline that became one of the most recognisable of its decade. Coldabank keeps the vocal and that hook, and stretches the 2:43 single to just over four minutes, long enough to be mixed in and out of a DJ set. Atlantic released it as a single on 13 October 2017, while the original was still climbing the charts.
Musical Breakdown
Intro
The single gets to the point at once; the remix has more than a minute extra to spend, and the first place to hear it is how long the beat runs before the voice, a DJ’s way in.
Main Section
Listen for the vocal and the borrowed hook over the reworked rhythm, and for what the bassline that drove the band’s version does here.
Breakdown
Listen for the stretches between vocal passages where rhythm and bass carry the track alone: that is the space a club mix needs.
Outro
Compare the ending with the single’s: a club version is made to hand over to the next record rather than simply stop.
Concepts in Focus
A remix rebuilds a finished recording, usually from its separate parts, for a new purpose. Shazam’s credits list Coldabank both as the remixer and among the mixing engineers: he reworked the band’s own recording rather than covering the song. Listen to what he keeps and what he changes.
Feel It Still is itself an interpolation: instead of sampling the Marvelettes’ record, the band re-sang its melody, which is why Motown’s Brian Holland, Robert Bateman and Freddie Gorman share the writing credit. A remix of an interpolation is a borrowing on top of a borrowing, and the hook survives both.
The bassline is what makes the remix possible. A dance version needs a part that can carry long stretches without a vocal, and this song already had one. Compare it with the band’s single, Portugal. The Man – Feel It Still, and notice how much of the song lives in that line.
Artistic Context
Coldabank is the alias of Joachim, a Bristol-born, London-based DJ, producer and singer who named himself after the house in Yorkshire where his father grew up. Before his own singles he toured the world as the live DJ for Labrinth, and his remixes include work for Rudimental, Clean Bandit and Charli XCX. He names Basement Jaxx, Groove Armada and Fatboy Slim as his dance influences, and his own records lean to melodic, pop-minded dance music.
Impact and Reception
The original was a sleeper hit: it took eight months to reach number four on the Billboard Hot 100, spent 20 weeks at number one on the Alternative Songs chart and won the Grammy for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance in 2018. Coldabank’s version came out through the same label and on the band’s own YouTube channel. It is here as a lesson in how a rock single becomes a club record without losing itself. Play it after the original and listen for the minute and a half that changes everything.
